1971–present
Gabríela Friðriksdóttir
The Icelandic artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir (born 1971) works in painting, sculpture, drawing and video. In 2005 she showed a cycle of four films in the Icelandic pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She is also known for her work with Björk: the packaging for the box set Family Tree and the video for “Where Is the Line”. Her art is linked to New Gothic Art.
Biography
In 2005, at the 51st Venice Biennale, the Icelandic pavilion showed four films made by Gabríela Friðriksdóttir together with her husband, the artist Daníel Ágúst Haraldsson. The installation was called “Versations Tetralogia”. The music and video installations for the exhibition were handled by Björk, with whom Friðriksdóttir had already worked.
She was born in 1971 in Reykjavík. I can say nothing definite about her years of study.
Her first notable award came in 2001: Iceland’s Gudmunda Art Prize. In 2002 she and Björk designed the box for the set Family Tree. In 2005 she made the video for the song “Where Is the Line” from the album Medúlla. She later worked with the singer again: in 2023 the video for “Victimhood”, from the album Fossora, was released, with Friðriksdóttir credited as co-director and co-creative director, and she created its artwork. After Venice her video works were shown in a number of countries. In 2006 she and Haraldsson made the film “Inside the Core”; an exhibition of the same name was held at the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich. In the same year “Endless Light” was shown in Munich, in the Osram Art Projects programme. In 2007 came the video work “Ouroboros”, shown at the Spielhaus Morrison gallery in Berlin. Her work has also appeared at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík, the Museum of Modern Art in Oslo and the Kunsthaus Graz.
In 2008, together with the Paris studio M/M, she created “Tree of Signs”, a bronze sculpture placed outdoors in the Icelandic landscape.
In 2011 the solo exhibition “Crepusculum”, an installation with video, was held at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt; in 2013 the work was shown at the Lyon Biennale. In 2016 the exhibition “The Inner Life of a Hay Bale” opened at Gallery Gamma in Reykjavík. In 2017 Friðriksdóttir made the film “Dies Irae” for the choreographic project “Sacrifice”, in which Erna Ómarsdóttir, Ragnar Kjartansson and Matthew Barney took part. In 2018 she showed paintings at the Hverfisgallerí in Reykjavík, in the exhibition “GABRIELA”. In 2020 she made the sets for the immersive installation “Solastalgia” by Pierre-Alain Giraud and Antoine Viviani, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and at the National Gallery of Iceland. Her work has been associated with New Gothic Art.
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